The Homiletic Tradition of the Early Church (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798235445154)

From its earliest moments, the Christian movement understood itself as a community shaped, sustained, and propelled by proclamation. Before creeds were formalized, before ecclesiastical structures solidified, and long before Christian theology acquired the conceptual precision of later centuries, the Church preached. It preached in homes and marketplaces, in synagogues and city streets, in catacombs and basilicas, in whispered encouragements to the persecuted and in soaring orations before emperors. Preaching was not merely one activity among many; it was the lifeblood of a movement that believed God had spoken definitively in Jesus Christ and that this message demanded to be announced. The homiletic tradition of the early Church, therefore, is not a peripheral curiosity but a central window into how the first Christians understood their faith, their Scriptures, their mission, and themselves.